Dissolving
by champagne-and-razor-blades
Summary: "She's cold. It's late. They're tired. Tea sounds like a good idea."


I was drinking tea & I had this idea.

* * *

She showed up at his door with her hair in a long plait down her back about twenty five minutes after she stopped replying to his texts. He could tell it was her just from the way that she knocked.

Now, she looks almost sheepish (yet adorable) standing in the doorway wearing pale purple leggings and an oversized woolen cardigan. There's little smudges of makeup underneath her eyes. He just wants to hug her, never let her go.

"Sorry, Rick, I don't know why I'm-" she trails off, gesturing vaguely towards herself in the doorway.

He knows exactly why she's here, even if she doesn't.

The case they closed today had stretched out for over a month; the bastard had been excruciatingly difficult to track down and even harder to catch. He'd fought like he had a life worth defending. This man wasn't just an ordinary murderer; ( was it even possible to have an 'ordinary murderer'? As far as her - their? - job went, maybe it was.) he was a serial rapist with a thing for little girls.

Three of them. Three girls, tiny little limbs spreadeagled with their bodies sprawled like broken dolls, long hair tangled and dirty. They'd kept going missing, plucked from the streets when their parents' backs were turned, and three to five days later the bodies had shown up.

They had managed to save two of them.

The two who had they had found in the cellar of his house when they broke in, the two who had appeared almost angelic, drugged up but mercifully unharmed on the damp floor.

They had saved them, and that was important. But they _hadn't _saved the other three, and he knows that, to her, at least, that matters more. She dwells on the deaths she hasn't prevented rather than the ones she has.

He knows that the guilt weighs down on her, drowning her, pulling her under the surface, he knows that endless "what if"s plague her at night, that when she finally manages to drift into an uneasy sleep, those dead children's faces haunt her dreams.

And _that _is why she's here.

"No, no, come in."

Beckett stays close to him as he leads her to the living room, as if she needs something to hold onto, and his presence is just enough.

(she seems very small for such a tall person in the hazy half-light of his loft.)

Castle isn't sure what she wants from him tonight, what she needs, but he's pretty sure he needs some of it too. He motions for her to sit on the couch, and tucks a blanket over her when she does, because some distant, disconnected part of his brain recognises that she's shivering.

"I'll be back in a minute." he says it because they both need the reassurance that neither of them are going anywhere.

She's cold. It's late. They're tired. Tea sounds like a good idea.

He knows how she takes her tea; likes berry flavours, sometimes apple, strong but no sugar. Castle has his milky, with liberal spoonfuls of sugar stirred in.

She is the reason why he keeps his pantry stocked with flavoured teabags. Admittedly, Mother occasionally dips into the box labelled, "Green tea and raspberry" when she's on a health kick, but the rest is all Beckett's.

Rick flicks their soggy teabags into the sink, waits for his sugar crystals to dissolve like melting snowflakes.

As he carries the tea to her, she smiles at the mug he's give her; dark blue with silver handcuffs and the word 'kinky' in a deceptively floral script. She gave it to him for his birthday last year. His own mug is bright pink and bears the phrase 'daddy of the year'. A present from Alexis that remains remarkably undamaged after six years.

They sit there in silence, the fruity steam curling around them in damp tendrils.

She shuffles closer to him - 'shuffles' is possibly the wrong word, it's more like she's _gravitating _- and folds her slender legs under her body, pulling the fluffy rug over his lap as well as hers.

They sip in silence.

The warmth of having her so close mingles with the warmth of the tea, seeps slowly through him, heavy and sleepy.

Beckett, who is very much Kate in this moment, hums softly in the back of her throat, almost a purr. He watches her throat bob as she swallows another mouthful of tea.

Neither of them, speak, because there's not really anything elft to say. The long days and lonely nights have ebbed the words out of them. After a few lingering minutes, Kate sets her cup down and shifts closer to him, leaning the smooth curves of her body against the firmer lines of his.

Castle pulls her against him, slipping his free arm around her shoulders as her head dips down, down to lie on his shoulder, her nose pressing into the warmth of his neck.

They let the night tick on in sleepy surrender. She feebly suggests that it's late, that she should go home, a few times, and each time she makes no move to follow through with it. Castle knows he wouldn't let her leave, anyway; the idea of a sad Kate pacing her apartment alone without anyone to hold her together is so heartbreaking that he can't resist pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

(She falls asleep against him twenty minutes later. He lies down sideways on his couch, she follows the warmth of his body, and in the morning she wakes up with his heart beating steadily underneath her ear.)

_fin._


End file.
